


Tolstoy

by cenotaphy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Feels, Beach Read? Lady I'm Tolstoy, Caring Sam Winchester, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Saps, Castiel being the only one with a self-esteem low enough to give Dean a run for his money, Coda, Confessions, Dean Destroying His Liver, Dean Talking About His Feelings, Dean and Cas being utterly and idiotically gone on each other, Dean's A+ Self-Esteem, Episode: s15e11 The Gamblers, Everyone Gets A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Heart-to-Heart, Jack is a cinnamon roll as usual, Jack's soul, Jack's three dads, M/M, Sam Winchester Being an Actual A+ Parent, Season/Series 15, aka the most iconic line ever to come out of that boy's mouth, but specifically one of them, the world is going to shit tomorrow but tonight everything is fine!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenotaphy/pseuds/cenotaphy
Summary: Before the morning, there's time for words that need saying. Sam talks to Jack, and Dean talks to Castiel.Coda to 15x11, "The Gamblers".
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jack Kline & Sam Winchester
Comments: 34
Kudos: 399





	Tolstoy

They get Jack reinstalled in his old room, which doesn't take long. It looks exactly the same as the last time Jack occupied it. Sam doesn't think anyone's set foot in it since the day of the cemetery. Cas, maybe, but Cas has never left much in the way of traces. Sam can picture Cas moving through the room in the dark in that careful way of his, touching everything, disturbing nothing.

Jack smiles now as he runs his fingertips along the bed frame, the desk, the chest of drawers in the corner. The stiffness is starting to bleed out of his shoulders; Sam catches him darting quick glances, half-happy and half-disbelieving, at each of them in turn.

"Get some sleep," Dean is saying bossily, already in mother-hen mode, and everyone is shuffling towards the door as Jack carefully turns back the bedcovers. Sam hangs back for a moment.

"Jack," he says carefully, listening to the others' retreating footsteps. They've already listened to Jack's story, dissected the details of his time in the Empty, of his sudden resurrection, of Billie's (insane) plan. But through it all, there was one thing that wasn't—

"Sam?" says Jack. He sits down on the bed and looks at Sam with that sharp, steady gaze of his, as unfaltering as ever. It makes Sam's heart turn over, to see the faith naked on Jack's face. It sends a cold little spike of fear through him, too, because Sam remembers what it was like to have such pure and trusting faith in himself, in where he belonged, in doing what he believed was right. He remembers how easy it was to be wrong.

Jack waits for a moment, and when Sam continues to hesitate, he smiles a little half-smile and says, frank, "You want to know if I got my soul back."

That's it—and not it.

"It's not that," says Sam. He sits down on the bed next to Jack. "Or, not just that. I want _you_ to know that it doesn't matter to us, Jack. We'll find a way to get it back."

The gentle confidence in Jack's expression wavers. His mouth wobbles a little.

"Jack—"

Jack folds forward into Sam, like a plant that can't hold itself upright any longer.

"Jack," says Sam again, helplessly. He puts his arms around the boy and feels tiny tremors, feels tears dampening the fabric of his shirt where Jack's face is buried in the hollow of his shoulder. Maybe the faith he'd seen was a mask, he thinks belatedly. Maybe under all that, Jack hadn't had faith in where he belonged at all.

"Hey, it's okay," says Sam, and turns his head to rest his chin on the top of Jack's head. He rubs encouraging circles on Jack's back. "It's okay, Jack. We love you—you know that, right?"

Jack slowly sits back up, scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand in a motion that suddenly reminds Sam, very sharply and achingly, of Dean.

"Billie said it was never really gone," he mumbles. His voice is cloggy with tears.

Sam starts. "What? But when you used your powers—"

"The _shape_ of it was still there," says Jack, "it wasn't lost. But when I destroyed Michael, I burned off everything that...that made it _be_. Billie said..." His hands float up, carving a shape in the air. "She said it was like...like a light bulb with no current running through it. Like an empty shell."

So it really _had_ been a soulless Jack they'd been facing, after all. Just with the skeleton of the real Jack buried somewhere inside, a memory, an unlit lamp.

"And now?" says Sam, carefully. He was telling the truth when he said it didn't matter, because it _doesn't_ , but he still has to know. He'd watched the way Dean's eyes had found Cas's face, earlier; he'd watched how Cas's nod was enough for his brother, as it always has been. But it's been a long time since Sam's run on nothing but faith, and so he has to _know_.

Jack sniffs. He looks around vaguely and then reaches for the box of tissues on the bedside table. "The Grigori. They siphon off the energy of human souls. I know eating hearts is—a strange thing to do, but when I do it...Sam, it doesn't just increase my powers."

"It replenishes your soul," Sam realizes.

Jack nods eagerly. "It isn't fully healed yet, but it's getting closer." He blows his nose.

"Jack, that's—that's great."

"I didn't realize, while I was like that." The smile slides off Jack's face. "How wrong it felt. To not feel at all. But now, when I remember it—" He shivers.

Sam knows well enough. "You don't really feel it," he says. "Not while you don't have it. You know something's missing, you know it _should_ matter, but it doesn't _feel_ wrong, until after, until—"

"Until you're looking back at yourself," Jack finishes. He crumples the tissue in his clenched fist. "At what you were. I don't want to—be that person, again. I don't want to—not understand what's right. Sam, if that happens again—"

Sam cuts him off. He doesn't want to hear the end of the sentence. "It won't," he swears, and finds that he believes himself. Maybe he does have a little faith left, after all.

He pulls Jack back into his arms. "It won't, Jack."

***

When Sam starts shuffling from foot to foot with all the subtlety of a 6'5" abominable snowman in a china shop, Dean figures he's gearing up to have a heart-to-heart with the kid. Leave it to Sammy to wait all of five minutes before diving into the touchy-feely stuff.

That's fine with Dean. He starts making a fuss about bedtimes—like anyone in this goddamn bunker ever listens to him when he tries to make sure they're getting enough goddamn sleep—and lets Sam dawdle at the door as Dean meanders down the hall to his bedroom and Cas goes off to do whatever the hell Cas does when people sleep.

Dean knows he should talk to Jack too, and he will, just—not yet. The thought of Mary's death isn't the raging, festering wound it once was, but the dull ache of it is still there. Dean wants more time to probe the feeling first, search himself for latent pits of anger before he touches the subject out loud. He's done spewing poison in the heat of the moment, done saying furious things he'll going to regret later, if he can help it. _I'm trying, Cas_ , he thinks wryly.

He putters aimlessly around his bedroom for a few minutes, nursing his mostly-empty beer and straightening things that don't need to be straightened, before realizing that he's not actually tired enough to go to bed yet.

So he wanders back to the kitchen and there Cas is, sitting quietly at the table.

The sight of him eases a knot of tension Dean hadn't even realized was coiled in his chest. He shies away from the feeling; it's too close to relief, and he doesn't want to think about the fact that he never really _expects_ to come across Cas anywhere in the bunker—that he's always expecting Cas to have left while Dean wasn't watching.

"Heya, Cas," he says easily. He trades his empty beer for a fresh one. He's been drinking a little more than he should for a quiet night in (but he just got his indestructible liver back, so sue him) and there's a pleasant warmth suffusing his limbs.

Cas looks up in surprise as Dean sits down and Dean realizes belatedly that his traitorous body has dropped itself into a seat beside to Cas, instead of across from him. He covers it up by cuffing Cas gently on the shoulder. "You doing okay?"

"It's a lot to take in," says Cas. He smiles a little, but it's a taut expression, and the ever-present worry lines stay creased around his eyes. Dean squashes the urge to reach over and smooth them out. "I'm overjoyed we have Jack again, of course."

"Yeah, man, the joy's just radiating off you," Dean says, and gets a withering look for his troubles.

"This plan, it's...it's dangerous. For all of us, but for Jack most of all."

"Yeah, well." Dean takes a long sip. "When have our plans ever been safe?"

Cas cracks a real smile, finally. "Don't even start."

"We'll be okay, Cas. We'll protect him. He doesn't have to do this alone."

The smile slips back off Cas's face, and he looks away. "I want to believe that, but Dean...we couldn't protect him from Chuck the last time. I'm not...what if we can't this time, either?"

"Hey, no." Dean sets the bottle down. "I did not drive to Alaska and get _hustled_ at _pool_ just for you to start losing hope right when we get our edge back. We're going to beat him, Cas. We'll be enough."

"It's not your abilities I'm worried about," says Cas quietly. He studies his hands where they rest, flat, on the table.

"Castiel," says Dean. The curl of the name is something lovely and strange on his tongue. Cas twitches almost imperceptibly, and turns the laser of his focused gaze onto Dean's face, which almost shuts Dean up right then and there. But dammit, this is _important_ —he shakes off the surge of helpless wanting that threatens to leave him speechless, and plunges doggedly ahead.

"You're stronger than all of us. No, listen." He talks over Cas's muted noise of protest. "I believe in myself because I gotta, you know? I _have_ to, in order to keep getting up in the mornings. But _you_ , I believe in you because it's easy. I look at you and I see—I see—"

He fumbles, not at a loss for words but instead overwhelmed by them, frantically sifting through the torrent for something that isn't too _much_ , for words that won't lay him out bare and raw and split-open for Cas to see right through. "—Cas, I see one of the strongest people I've ever met in my life. I know you've made your share of mistakes but man, at the end of the day? There's _no_ doubt in my mind that you could do this alone if you had to—and you _don't_ have to. You have us. I—me and Sam, we're with you. We've got this."

Cas looks at Dean with something unreadable and immense unfolding behind his eyes. He looks at Dean, and _looks_ at Dean, and says nothing at all.

Dean manages to hold that blue gaze for all of about three seconds before his nerve fails him and he looks away.

"And hey," he says, taking refuge in humor like a damn coward, which is what he is. "The way you feel—I get it, trust me. I got called a damn beach read by a _goddess_ , try coming back from that."

Cas furrows his brow. "Beach read?"

"Uh—a book you read at a beach. You know."

Cas still looks mystified, which is fair. Dean supposes there's a lot of embedded cultural nuance here.

"It's like—" He gestures vaguely. "It's something light. Shallow. Something you read at the beach because you want something easy, and then you never think about it again." He swallows and reaches for his beer to cover up the sting of memory because _fuck_ , that insult had burned. Dean can banter all he likes, can come back swinging with easy confidence every time, but there's always going to be a part of him that recognizes the kernel of truth in every cutting jab.

Cas's face clouds over, like the sky before a storm. "Ah," he says quietly. "I understand the point she was trying to make."

"Yup," Dean says. He lifts the bottle to his mouth and aims to drain it.

"If you were a book," says Cas, "I would read you at the beach."

Dean tries not to flinch. He fails.

"And in the forest," says Cas, slowly and clearly. "And on the tops of mountains, and in the dunes of the desert, and in open fields in winter. And in storms, and under clear skies, and before battle, when it's courage I need, and after battle, when it's peace I want. And in all places that I have loved, and in whatever place I dared to call home at any given moment."

Dean chokes. He sets the bottle down hard. He doesn't look at Cas, because he expects if he does he will shatter entirely, but he does marshal a half-dozen jokes to defuse the moment, and he does open his mouth to rapid-fire all of them immediately.

Instead, he hears himself say, "When you were gone, it was like a part of me was missing."

Cas goes still. Very quietly, he says, "When I left, I thought you only felt anger toward me."

"I don't just mean this time," Dean whispers. He can barely hear himself. "I mean every time. Every time you left. Every time I pushed you away. Every time you were missing. Every time you died."

He looks up and the impossible wideness of Cas's eyes is what finally undoes him. He can't do this. He can't do this.

"Sorry," he says, as he starts to push up from the table, "a week of having to actually care about my liver and I turn into a lightweight, I should—"

"I love you," says Cas.

Dean falls back into his seat. His chest feels flayed open. He can't breathe. Panic sets every nerve in his body on fire.

 _Say it back_ , something screams inside him.

 _I can't_ , he thinks in terror, _I can't, I can't_.

It doesn't matter what he wants, it doesn't matter that there's a terrible kind of blankness welling up in Cas's gaze the longer Dean stays silent, it matters that Dean is _Dean_ and he _can't_ have this.

Through the terror, he looks at Cas, tired and worried and beautiful under the fluorescent kitchen lighting, and something snaps loose inside him and for the first time, he thinks, _but why can't I?_

"I'm not good enough for you," he blurts desperately. "Cas, I never will be."

Cas's hand closes around Dean's wrist, a vice grip, just shy of bruising. "If you ever say that to me again," he says, low and furious, "I will kiss the goddamn words out of your infuriating mouth."

Dean opens his mouth. He scrapes together whatever courage he has left and leans forward.

"I love you," he says, and kisses Cas.

Cas cups his hands around the sides of Dean's face and kisses back. They don't stop for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> If you, like me, have been fuming for days over DEAN "I'M BATMAN" WINCHESTER being called a beach read to his blessed face, I hope you enjoyed this coda. *blows kisses* If you have thoughts, give me all your delicious reactions, they nourish me.


End file.
